Reese Witherspoon has been able to show off her comedy chops in several projects over the years, so it may surprise fans that she's only hosted Saturday Night Live two times. She recently revealed that she waited nearly 15 years to return to the sketch comedy show after she made her hosting debut in 2001, which happened to be the first episode after 9/11.
While appearing on the Monday, November 3, episode of the "Armchair Expert" podcast, Witherspoon, 49, looked back on hosting her first episode of SNL immediately after the 9/terrorist attacks when she was 24 years old.
“I would give that zero stars. Do not recommend,” Witherspoon said of her hosting debut. “It was just too much responsibility for a 24-year-old girl.”
She then recalled the show's creator and producer Lorne Michaels calling her ahead of the episode and saying, "I really need you to show up. I really, really need this. Rudy Giuliani’s gonna be here. All the firefighters are gonna be here. Paul Simon is gonna sing. I just need you to come out and do something a little light and tell America — you can’t feel — we gotta laugh again. We’ve got to get back the national spirit.'"
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While Witherspoon was nervous to host following such a tragedy, she said her “Southern and military ethics” kept her from backing out of her role as the episode’s host.
“I was 24. I also had a baby. I had a one-year-old. I was a new mom. I had the biggest movie come out that summer,” she recalled of her daughter, Ava Phillippe, whom she shares with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe. “But if you know me, if I tell you I’m going to do something, I mean there has to be a real disaster. We did it and it was good.”
The Walk the Line actress said she “completely left my body” during the episode “and did not go again for 15 years,” referring to the show.
-9/11 episode began with then-New York City mayor Giuliani, 81, giving a speech as he stood in solidarity with New York City firefighters and police officers. Simon, 84, then appeared to sing “The Boxer” before the episode got into Witherspoon's monologue and the normal format of the show.
Witherspoon notably didn't return to host the show again until May 2015, while those two appearances mark her only times hosting the show.
While she admitted that experience felt like too much responsibility for her, Michaels, 80, previously told Rolling Stone that Witherspoon was “fearless” while hosting the first episode since 9/11.
“I’ve always admired her enormously for that time. There were lots of people saying, ‘I don’t think you can go on.’ We’ve faced that many times before, but you just have to find a way to do it. I knew it was very, very important that we show up," he said.
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